Author: Sid

Salil and any other FVer that wants to try FastTrack.

BTW, if anyone else is interested, now would be a good time to try the 30 day free trial. We can do a mutual support effort here to see if we can get you up to speed together.

FastTrack is located at http://www/FastTrack.net I'll provide a link below.

FastTrack is a very complex set of tools. The metaphor I use is to liken it to the layers of an onion. It is best to start with the outer layer and gradually work your way in to the more complex aspects of its operation.

The DOS version has been around for years and as far as I know has no bugs in it. Many of the long time users of FT still use the DOS version on a daily basis, as do I. It is physically small and has most of the features one needs to analyze funds and indices. The manual for the DOS version is exceptionally well done.

The Windows version is a work in progress. The latest version 2.58 is much more bug free than earlier versions and I think is worth putting in the effort to learn it. Unfortunately it is a maverick in the Windows world as it does not use any of the expected Windows menu conventions.

Most items on the FT4WIN screen are live in the sense that a right click will bring up a menu for that item. When in doubt, point to something and try a right click.

The basics that you need to know are how to display one or more funds on the screen, how to format the chart (screen) and the use of fund families. Families can be defined as a particular management company's offering such as Fidelity, Janus etc. Families can also be related groups such as small cap funds, international funds etc. These two types are already defined and ready for your use. Families can also be user defined, such as your current holdings, a watch list etc.

Normally you bring a family into a chart by loading the family. The next typical step is to define some time period of interest and then rank the funds during that period.

Then you can choose how to display up to six funds at one time in the chart; or add indicators RSI, MACD, relative strength etc. These chart layouts can be saved with appropriate names if you wish.

Did you download the tutorials in addition to the executable files? Do so only if you have a fast connection, there is about 45Mb of them. Use the help files. Right click on things. Even things like chart labels may have expandable content hidden under them.

As an exercise try loading the Fido select funds. Family name SELECT. Try ranking them, try changing the chart Period (1,2,3,6 months or One, Two, tHree, fiVe years, or ALL data. Right click on a blank area of the chart. Browse thru the menu that pops up; try adding a couple indicators ( change TTTTTT to TTTAIM) for Accutrack, RSI and MACD.

Enough for now
Sid

• FastTrack

FT02

CP = current price
BP = % change between the poles, or from poles to end of chart
ANN = Annualized rate of return for the period used for BP

The poles (cursors) can be moved by clicking on the price chart to set one pole. They can also be moved by sliding the mouse cursor around in the date area.

{Home} sets the poles to the left side of the screen.

For BP readings other than than standard screen widths slide the poles to the two prices of interest. You can also set the chart to any period you want by right clicking on an empty chart area to bring up the menu and choosing When for the period. Enter the start and end dates in the boxes on the left.

Some families you might want to create:

current holdings
your watch list ( This would be the 100-200 funds in many asset classes, including a mmf, that Art and I have discussed in the past. )
Hot Funds like FFF

For small families you can just type in the funds to add into the new family. Save Fam when done.

Read some help files!

I'll cover PRISM in FT03

Sid

FT03

OK, we are working with the demo version 2.58 of FastTrack for the Web (FT4WEB or FT4WIN). Available at www.fasttrack.net

3 things that make FT useful.
1. The cleanest mutual fund prices available; corrected for distributions so funds may be compared directly. Many people use the data in other formats in other programs.
2. FT is designed to allow fast multi period comparisons of funds, indices and other data that can be imported into FT.
3. FT has an open architecture which means a number of users have written high powered analysis tools and utilities that read the FT database directly. This allows additional features to be created in addition to the standard ones.

In these notes I will not recreate the help files contents, rather I will try to guide you to available resources. Many times help files are not of much use because first you need to know that something can be done. Once you know there is some feature available to accomplish some specific task the help files and manuals can be used to uncover the details.

PRISM

PRISM is both a chart setup and an analysis technique. I'll talk about the setup and make a few comments on analysis. Be aware that here are two flavors of the prism analysis. The second I'll refer to as the Merwin setup.

So far you have been using the T (Total return) chart. PRISM refers to the different formats and indicators applied for this technique.

P price chart with short and long moving averages
R relative strength between the red and green price series
I the RSI indicator
S the Stochastic indicator
M MACD histogram

There are six plotting areas available so we will use 2 wide for the price. Right click on blank chart area to bring up the Appearance menu. Change Chart Select to PPRISM or click on the buttons, redraw chart. Set the period to One year, red fund to FIDSX, green fund to 5%. Now lets set the indicator parameters. Right click on a chart heading like Price or Macd. The parameter dialog box comes up with default parameters. Set up the box with the parameters below. Save as PRISM_IT, click done. We can bring up this parameter set later if desired.

The prism setup allows you to compare performance of a fund to an index, another fund, or in this case a 5% MMF and to make judgements about possible buy/sell points.

The chart in FT04
Sid

FT04

So many things on this chart, lets get started. Bring your chart up in FT if you have it so you can toggle back and forth between this text and the chart.

NOTE: There is nothing magical about the numbers used here. This is just an intermediate term chart.

Price with 10 (yellow) and 20 (cyan) day moving averages. Red and green arrows below indicate moving average cross over points. These arrows are also replicated on the RSI chart …don't ask. A red arrow suggests you buy the red fund. A green arrow suggests you sell the red fund and buy the green fund, 5% in this case. You can see some buy/sell/buy whipsaws there.

Relative strength (yellow line) between the red and green price series. Yellow moving down means red is weaker than green, yellow moving up, red is stronger than green. This is really useful. If the red fund is weaker than 5%, why on earth would you want to buy it? The green fund can be another fund, an index like the SP500 (sp-cp), or perhaps a 30% rate of return. If red is not going up faster than the comparison fund, again, why would you want to buy it?

RSI 14 no B/S arrows but the idea is to buy if RSI crosses from below to above the center line (50) and sell if RSSI crossed from above to below 50. Plenty of false crossings there

Stochastic: This is a nonstandard (30,16,9) slow stoch used here as a type of noise filter. Buy crossovers from below the center (50) to above and sell downward crossovers of 50. You can also B/S crossovers of Stoch and its cyan moving average (sometimes ).

MACD histogram (81,33,33) has its own B/S arrows at the bottom. This is a non standard slow macd used as a trending indicator in this application.. BTW, click on these chart labels to see what parameters are being used.

So we have a set of fairly fast moving averages and a std RSI (an oscillator) that will generate many signals, some of which may be tops and bottoms. We have a slow oscillator (slow stoch) and a trend indicator (slow macd histo) provide some filtering. The idea here is to not depend on any single indicator but to confirm possible B/S with other indicators that have shorter or longer time periods.

For the whole PRISM strategy there is a short term setup, this intermediate term setup, and a long term setup.

Grab the pole (click and drag) and move it to the 6/22/99 buy arrow. Look at the five plots to see whether a buy here might make sense. MA xover up - ok, RS up? Maybe, RSI > 50 - ok, stoch appx 50? - no, macd near o xover - no. Doesn't look like a buy point because the slower indicators do NOT confirm the short term indicators. Whipsaw avoided.

I would have taken the 5/18 sell, maybe 6/29 buy, 7/26 sell, 10/26 buy, maybe 11/30 sell, and no signal but with the deteriorating indicators I would have bailed out by 12/14 when stoch and macd went to sell conditions. Not a silver bullet by any means, but a rational approach to decision making. Notice that it has not bought this financial sector fund yet…maybe next week if financials keep going up.

This is trend following analysis. It will never get you in at the bottom or out at the top. It is always late. If the fund does not trend for at least several weeks you will still get whipsawed, it will just be on a longer time frame. Fvfrown. Maybe we can demonstrate counter trend trading sometime…it will take some extra work.

More in FT05 to follow
Sid

FT05

OK You have done the one time hard work of setting up PRISM and your 200 fund personalized family, now the fun can begin.

Load your family you want to evaluate, drag the pole to perhaps one month ago, click the toolbar rank button to rank the funds. Double click the top fund in the list on the right to load it into PRISM red.

Now just eyeball the chart, then click the toolbar down arrow to move down to the next fund. Once you get familiar with the chart appearance you can look at each one for a few seconds to see if it needs further study and move on. You can scan 200 funds in just a few minutes.

Got a hot new tip from the FV board? Click the green box and type the symbol in. Now you can compare your ranked list (red) to that hot tip (green) to see if it is any better than your current funds.

Do you want to see how your trading might have done over the last year or so? Remember those b/s arrows below the RSI plot. Well you can edit those. See help. You can delete the trades you would not have taken, keep the ones you took. You can also add other trades. Fine so what…

Well, change the plot from PPRISM to PRISM2, a new plot at the bottom will show when you were in the fund and when you were in the mmf ( or different fund, a J plot). The statistics on the right area (click VAL) will show the untraded values of Ru and the actively traded value of Ra. See help. You might not see a increase in total return but if your trading scheme is any good you should see that you are out of the market during periods of big drawdowns.

A pause for questions, then we will see if FT06 is needed
Sid

Just a quick note about the intermediate PRISM screen we were discussing in the previous sessions.

For FIDSX, Fido Fin Svcs, the PRISM setup went to a buy signal on either 3/17 ot 3/20 depending on how you want to read the charts. This does not mean to run out and buy FIDSX, it is being posted as part of the learning process in the charts lessons.

Cheers
Sid

FT07

At no time will my fingers leave my hand for this tick...

Click on the red fund box, lower left. Hold down the shift key and click on the blue fund box, lower right. Then in the Chart Toolbar click on the arrow for the top of the fund list. That is the one with the bar above it. Presto, you just selected six funds. (This assumes the display is TTTTTT.)

In the Chart Toolbar, click the down arrow. You have now selected the next six funds. This is handy for really fast checks of a list with many funds or stocks.

To finish off the PRISM screen here are the parameters for all three time periods.
LT: P 30 15, S 60 30 15, M 100 50 33
IT: P 20 20, S 30 16 09, M 81 33 33
ST: P 10 05, S 14 05 05, M 40 16 16

Saving setups: Right click on a blank area, save, chart, select the userdef folder save the prism chart as prism_it. Use the same procedure to save the intermediate prism parameter set as prism_it. Now you can relaod the chart and the parameters to use with the chart.

I don't like the FT moving average display so I use the P chart instead. Load the default parameter set by clicking on the upper left chart label to bring up the parameters menu. Make Price short avg = 50 and Price long avg = 200, save the parameter set as 50_200 and go back to the chart and click on a blank area, plot One year. You now have a price chart with 50 and 200 day moving averages on it.

Prices can be exported. Click on the export tab, upper right and check the help screen. There are several flavors of export format available.

Good Trading
Sid